The Sunday Salon and how Tess Gerritsen Scares the Pants off Me… Her Medical Thrillers

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them, and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....

That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual. Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read. And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs. Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon, an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities and fall into a good book….

This Sunday I've got my mind beyond reading. Tomorrow I am going in for surgery on my right knee. It's been a long haul waiting for this to be done and this will only the first of two. As some of you already know, I was in a pretty bad car accident at work. Dealing with Workers Comp is complicated, and a government shutdown delayed approvals even more, but finally OR here I come. Yah! I'll also finally be learning to walk again! SO, I thought it would be only appropriate to share some great medical thrillers… And Tess Gerritsen is a favorite author of mine who can scare the pants off you! Her books are so well written and so plausible that they are frightening! In the mood for some guilty pleasure reading? Here are what I think are Tess Gerritsen's top 3 medical thrillers…

 The Surgeon… He slips into homes at night and walks silently into bedrooms where women lie sleeping, about to awaken to a living nightmare. The precision of his methods suggests that he is a deranged man of medicine, prompting the Boston newspapers to dub him “The Surgeon.” Led by Detectives Thomas Moore and Jane Rizzoli, the cops must consult the victim of a nearly identical crime: Two years ago, Dr. Catherine Cordell fought back and filled an attacker before he could complete his assault. Now this new killer is re-creating, with chilling accuracy, the details of Cordell’s ordeal. With every new murder he seems to be taunting her, cutting ever closer, from her hospital to her home. And neither Moore nor Rizzoli can protect Cordell from a ruthless hunter who somehow understands—and savors—the secret fears of every woman he kills.

Before the TV show, detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles, were just fictional characters on the page. I believe this is the first book with these two detectives and it is a fast paced page-turner.

Gravity… Dr. Emma Watson has been training for the adventure of a lifetime: to study living beings in space. But her mission aboard the International Space Station turns into a nightmare beyond imagining when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control -- and infects the space station crew with agonizing and deadly results. Emma struggles to contain the outbreak while back on Earth her estranged husband, Jack McCallum, works frantically with NASA to bring her home. But there will be no rescue. The contagion now threatens Earth's population, and the astronauts are stranded in orbit, quarantined aboard the station -- where they are dying one by one…

This is an edge of your seat read! And I mean it! And the romance between Emma and her husband Jack is so touching. I remember listening to an interview with Tess Gerritsen about the writing of this book, and she actually met with NASA scientists to create an authentic terror. I loved this book! It's a stand alone read so no continuing series. BTW, Absolutely no connection to the movie that just came out, but gosh there are quite a few coincidences between the plot of these two and not to mention the same title! Here's a link about what Tess has to say about that!

Life Support… The quiet overnight shift at Springer Hospital ER suits Dr. Toby Harper just fine -- until she admits a man in critical condition from a possible viral infection of the brain. The delirious man barely responds to treatment -- and then disappears without a trace. Before Toby can find him, a second case occurs, revealing a terrifying fact: the virus can only be spread through direct tissue exchange. Following a trail of death that winds from a pregnant sixteen-year-old prostitute to her own home, Toby discovers the unthinkable: the epidemic didn't just happen -- someone let it loose…. 

A modern day nightmare and another page turner. If you like medical thrillers or crime thrillers, Tess Gerritsen has a total of 16 books under her belt. Here's a little something about the author from her website…

Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D. While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. In 1987, her first novel was published. Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, was followed by eight more romantic suspense novels. She also wrote a screenplay, “Adrift”, which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson. Tess’s first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Now retired from medicine, she writes full time. She lives in Maine.

Do you like medical thrillers? Who are some of your favorite authors? It's been a long time since I've picked up one of these books, but even writing about them gives me the chills!

Weekly Update… 
*If you missed this week on Chick with Books, I did a lot of reading! First, for my Dive Into Poetry 2014 Challenge, I read Dog Stories by Mary Oliver. A sweet, simple, but poignant book of poetry about sharing a life with a dog. Most of these poems page homage to the dogs that have been in Mary Oliver's life, but they are really universal in their theme. I really enjoyed it and if you are a dog lover, you probably would too. Here is the link to MY REVIEW OF DOG STORIES.

*Last Sunday I talked about some books coming this summer that you should put on your list to remember, and The Girls of Corona del Mar by Rufi Thorpe was one of them -think girlfriends, think intense, think out of control. Well, I got a eBook Galley from the publishers, Knopf (a division of Random House) and just opened it to check out the writing, when I was drawn into the story hook, line and sinker. The writing is so good, and the story pulls you in. Now, it's not really a "happy" book, but it is an amazing read, one that I would definitely recommend- and especially for book clubs because there are so many things to discuss! To read more about it, here is the link to MY REVIEW OF THE GIRLS FROM CORONA DEL MAR.

*One of the books I was anticipating to come out was Dark Witch by Nora Roberts. It's almost everything I had hoped for in a Nora Roberts book! The setting is Ireland, there's a great romance and there is a ancestral curse. I reviewed Dark Witch saturday, Here's the link to my review.

So, how was your reading week? Any new books find there way into your home? Share your thoughts and your books right here! I'd love to hear about them! And in the meantime…

Happy Reading… Suzanne

Dog Songs by Mary Oliver… A Review

Dog Stories by Mary Oliver is about sloppy kisses, belly rubs, our furry companions insistence that you play because, what else would you rather be doing? Dog Stories is a collection of poems celebrating our love of dogs and the love we, in return, receive. They are simple poems, yet poignant, that reflect upon what all of us lucky enough to share or have shared a life with a furry companion experience...

"Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without   dogs?"… Mary Oliver from Dog Stories

Mary Oliver, dog lover & poet, writes about the dogs that have come into and left her life, but they are universal in their sentiments. The happy moments, the sad moments of a dog passing, the exuberance, the wonderment of the world, a near perfect world when shared with a dog and when we experience their unconditional love. These are dog stories, but Mary Oliver's poems go beyond just our relationships with our dogs, the poems also seem to speak to our relationship with nature, and how we as humans can be touched and made to appreciate the nature that surrounds us.

I enjoy poetry, but I don't read a lot of poetry books. I thought I would change all that this year. As a dog lover I was motivated to open the pages of Dog Stories, and enjoyed what I found between the pages. Though Mary was speaking of her dogs, it brought back fond memories of time spent with my fur baby BJ, especially her poem entitled The Sweetness of Dogs, about sitting out in the moonlight…

                                              thinking how grateful I am for the moon's
                                              perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich
                                              it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,
                                              leans against me and gazes up into 
                                              my face. As though I were just as wonderful
                                              as the perfect moon.
                                                                                  …excerpt from The Sweetness of Dogs


A slim volume, with over 35 poems and an essay, should be savored and enjoyed. If you share a life with a dog, or have shared, it's a perfect volume to crack the spine every once in a while to remember or remind what life with a dog can be.

*P.S. This is my first book read for the Dive into Poetry Challenge!